First Reaction: Honey, it's not the schools job to get you a job.
Second Reaction: I get the disappointment. We are told the expected steps of life which includes the idea that college will feed naturally into employment. Many schools promise employment eligibility as part of their marketing pitch which often gets confused with employment guarantees. It's not the same, but people think it is.
The idea that even law students are struggling intrigued me, so I looked up the current job market for prospective law alumnus. Surprisingly, compared to the 91% rating before 2008, it actually doesn't look that great. A job that has historically signified wealth and stability, now has students pulling in poverty level jobs while carrying massive tuition debts to the tune of 100,000 or 150,000. Some law schools are going so far as to invent programs to incubate their alumnus who are unable to find work by either reimbursing a percentage of their tuition or creating law firms within the school itself and hiring their students.
I can't imagine the interest rate is all that great either. Talk about financial slavery. It's worse than loan sharking.
Is the problem the school, the student, the tuition, or the market?
I started to compare the traditional epitome of a college education to my own education in massage therapy, a skill type education, for clarification.
Skill type educations are traditionally looked down on and viewed as leading to impoverished and limited lives. That is, if you call learning how to live longer with more strength and flexibility, relieving pain and discomfort in others, having a lifetime to continue studying and practicing a passion, and travel the world while doing so limited. Yea, I'm sure that's way more limited than studying in one school for three years and then having an office in one town you don't dare leave while "hopefully" making ridiculous money. Really, it's just different strokes for different folks.
Honestly, the real issue there is budgeting practices vs life goals, but that's a whole other blog.
Anyway, refocus back to this subject. After only 6,000 and one year of my life in massage school, I could find a job and pull in figures anywhere from 10-70,000 depending on where and how much I want work. Did I mention full time for massage therapists is only 17 hours a week? That's a win for the writer in me. Again, a job is not guaranteed, but it's likely, because according to the American Massage Therapy Associations website, the industry is one of the fasted growing in America by whopping 11% a year.
(Pause: 6,000 debt vs 100,000 in debt yet both currently have about same earning power for the first 5 years. Let that sink in. Now, if you really have to, get some paper and a pencil and do the math. Financially, which situation is really the better one here?)
Let's also not forget that degree markets are totally saturated thanks to over emphasis of the importance of a college education over the last few decades. Don't get me wrong, I completely value my college education for the critical thinking it gave me and no small amount of pride. However, it did not guarantee me any well paying jobs which is what this article is about.
Let's put some perspective on this based on numbers I found between 2009-2011 that illustrates supply and demand.
Population Percentage of United States
United States ~309,349,689
Massage Therapists ~ 288,546 0.00093%
Lawyers ~1,225,452 0.004%
Nurses ~3,966,939 0.13%
Mechanics ~763,700 0.0025%
(Pause: Can we just cry for a second for the poor nurses? My 2008 graduating class was basically shoved towards becoming something in medicine for stability and baby boomer reasons. Once the boomers are gone though, then what? Hopefully those nurses are working towards their plan B.)
Who has the better deal here? Who is more financially better off and more able to function as an adult in society? Who has more spending or buying power the lawyer or the massage therapist? Who is more affordable or in more demand the one with skills or the one with a degree?
Basically, I am living the millennial realization.
My skill job is more immediately going to put me in a better situation financially, emotionally, and physically, than my graduate degree.
Why?
You could argue that in a perfect job market, where everything was working the way it was supposed to, lawyers would quickly pay off their debts and live in incredible situations within ten years that even the massage therapists could never have. The market, however, isn't perfect. It never was and never will be.
Let's also not forget the human factor. Like everything else in life, your career ultimately becomes what you put into it. The title doesn't matter as much as the work and the passion you put in, because that will always have some kind of satisfying pay off down the road. You may have to take a few other jobs so you can, I don't know, actually afford food until you get that pay off, but if that's your dream and you study and apply it, it will happen.
Now I know there are people out there who are smarter than me and can see all the little loopholes in this argument I am making, and probably a few of them are unemployed law students with too much time on their hands. That's o.k. I know that there are instances where I could be wrong.
Here are a few things I think you'd agree with.
- It is cruel to put people into un-affordable situations and essentially make them financial slaves to a dream that may never be.
- The problem isn't the job market, the problem is partly the tuition cost. Less money going into student debt means more spending power for the economy which, by the way, means more jobs for graduates.
- Saturated markets don't hire. The more college graduates their are, the less meaning that diploma will have.
- The schools business isn't revolved around babysitting, but educating and letting the students take charge of their own lives.
- All these data points I made mean nothing in the face of work ethic, trial and error, and how actively the individual decides to pursue the field of their education.
- Being a fantastic (insert dream job here) is a choice. It's up to me to put in the work, to continue my education, to continue to be passionate, to put myself into situations where I can succeed. All that is on my shoulders and success in my chosen career is determined by me and not my school.
Next time I really should focus on school tuition or budget finesse because, gosh darn it, we Americans are ridiculous on both fronts.
Each time I post here I am thankful for the opportunity to keep in practice what I know. I know my writing is still imperfect. In fact, I know some grammar police may look at these articles and sniff at some of my choices, but hey, that's what community is for.
Look! I was a responsible post-English grad and actually saved my sources! That, or I just know how to use the history bar.
Sources
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/08/law-school-to-issue-50-tuition-refunds-to-grads-who-cant-find-jobs/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorneys_in_the_United_States
https://www.amtamassage.org/articles/3/MTJ/detail/1837
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-registered-nurses/
https://www.studentscholarships.org/professions/150/employed/automotive_service_technicians_and_mechanics.php
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